Research stay in Kobe and Singapure

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Xenia Börner and Valeria Knels (both Chair of Business Administration, esp. Management Accounting and Control) spent research stays at Kobe University in Japan and Nanyang Business School in Singapore from February to April. They provide insights into their experiences in the following interview.

Where were you during your research stay and for how long?

In February and March 2024, we spent six weeks at Kobe University in Japan and then two weeks at Nanyang Business School in Singapore at the invitation of Prof. Kimitaka Nishitani and Asst. Prof. Huaxiang Yin.

How did the research stay come about?

Our chair has maintained close relations with researchers at Kobe University for many years. For example, an international questionnaire study was carried out jointly a few years ago. Kimitaka visited our faculty in March last year to further advance and discuss the paper projects based on this. This also gave rise to the idea of paying him and his colleagues a return visit in Kobe. The contact with Huaxiang arose primarily from the close collaboration between him and our doctoral supervisor, Thomas Günther, as part of their joint work at the Journal of Management Control. We were very pleased to be able to further expand our contact with Nanyang Business School through our research visit.

How much time passed between the initial idea and its implementation? Were there any hurdles in planning the visit?

Both inviting professors confirmed our research visit very quickly and sent us the necessary invitation letters in June last year. The main hurdles were selecting the right funding from an almost infinite number of potential funding providers for the research stay and compiling the sometimes very extensive application documents. We are very grateful that we were ultimately supported by the Graduate Academy of the TUD and its program for funding short research stays. In addition, the airport strike at the beginning of February prevented our departure at short notice. But you have to get used to hurdles like that.

What can you tell us about your stay in Kobe and Singapore? How did the collaboration with the renowned researchers work?

We were able to present our current research projects at both universities and discuss them with the researchers. The feedback we received helped us a lot to optimize existing research projects. Similarly, in Kobe we had the opportunity to give a PhD course on the methodology of structural equation modeling. This was a great opportunity to get to know the research projects of other doctoral candidates. Ideas for new research projects were also developed together with researchers from the host universities. All in all, we were able to gain a lot of new impulses both professionally and personally, optimize existing projects and also achieve some smaller and larger milestones through a clear focus on our research.

What experiences will you take back to Dresden?

We are very grateful for the hospitality we received at both universities and for the wonderful opportunity to focus clearly on our research for two months. The feedback we received and the contacts we made will certainly enrich our existing and future research projects. In addition, it was personally very valuable for us to be able to work together with the inviting colleagues in such a value-oriented culture as in Japan and such an innovative and cosmopolitan country as Singapore. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our doctoral supervisor, Prof. Günther, who made this research stay possible for us.